USS Admiral R. E. Coontz

USS Admiral R. E. Coontz (AP-122) (later the USNS General Alexander M. Patch (T-AP-122)) was an Admiral W. S. Benson-class transport built for the U.S. Navy during World War II. She was laid down under a Maritime Commission contract (MC hull 680) on 15 January 1943 at Alameda, California, by the Bethlehem Steel Corp., and launched on 22 April 1944. She was sponsored by Mrs. Edwin Kokko, daughter of Admiral Coontz, and commissioned on 21 November 1944. After service in both the Pacific and European Theaters of World War II, the Coontz was decommissioned and stricken from the Navy list in April 1946. Turned over to the U.S. War Department, she underwent repairs and alterations and was renamed General Alexander M. Patch, honoring General Alexander McCarrell Patch, commander of the victorious U.S. Army XIV Corps at Guadalcanal, and of the Seventh Army in the invasion of Southern France in 1944 and Germany in 1945. In the Army Transport Service she carried troops and cargo between Europe and the United States through 1950, rescued refugees during the Suez Crisis of 1956, made nearly 125 round-trips to West Germany in the early 1960s, in part helping to break the Berlin Blockade, then carried troops mid-decade on numerous trips to South Vietnam and from South Korea to South Vietnam in support of U.S. military operations in Southeast Asia.